Portable computing devices, such as mobile phones, portable and tablet computers, entertainment devices, handheld navigation devices, and the like are commonly implemented with a touch-screen display designed for user touch-input of text characters and passwords, such as in text entry boxes in a user interface form, page, or document. Text editing controls allow a user to input text characters into a text box, such as on a touch-screen, or with a keyboard, mouse, or similar input device.
A device user may type some text into a text box, such as in a single-line form text box or text search box, and then decide to clear the text and start over, entering different text or search terms. Most device users typically backspace to delete each entered text character one at a time. Most device users are also typically unaware of keyboard shortcuts to clear the entered text characters from a text box, such as Ctrl+A and the Delete key. Some text editing controls are now designed with a clear button as a user-selectable control that, if pressed or selected, will clear the entered text characters from a text box.
However, clear buttons are generally useful for text boxes in which a user can enter at least minimum number of text characters. For example, a text box that is designed for a user to simply enter his or her middle initial likely has a width parameter of only one or two characters, and adding a clear button to the middle initial text box is relatively pointless. A form developer is not likely to take the extra development step to add a clear button to a text box that is limited to only one or two characters because a user is just as likely to backspace to delete the one or two characters from a text box.
An application developer must then make a determination whether to include a clear button with each different text entry box on a case-by-case basis, which adds to the burden of designing an application page, form, or document. Additionally, the developer may also not know an appropriate width threshold to set the width parameter for each of the different text entry boxes. Current form development and design calls for the developer to have to decide and select from two different types of text editing controls, one that has a clear button, and one that does not. This not only adds to the burden of designing the text entry for an application page, form, or document, but also then maintaining the text entry fields for use.